


Soul For Sale

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-28
Updated: 2007-03-28
Packaged: 2017-10-06 23:00:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A quiet conversation that takes place months after the BDM.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soul For Sale

Jayne sat in a corner of the rec area, shining up his girls. The kitchen table was a better place, but Kaylee had shooed him out playfully, wanting to concoct something deadly for dinner. The light wasn't as good in the rec area, but he knew he could still find every last piece of dirt and grime caught on his girls.

"You treat them as if they have souls," River said softly from the doorway.

Jayne looked up at her and frowned. She was quiet in the past few months, but he suspected that she just had a better handle on her crazy. You didn't stop being crazy overnight, and just because she didn't act like it anymore didn't mean she didn't think it. Jayne didn't have any faith in Simon's medicines, since Simon had admitted that he had very little experience with psychiatry. Messing about with somebody's head was delicate business, something that had to be more art than science. Simon was all science, all the time. He did a good weave and good stitch work, but Jayne wouldn't trust Simon with the inner tinkerings of his mind.

"You call them girls," River continued, stepping into the rec area. She had a deck of cards in one hand, but was almost hesitant to really play with them. The pack went from one hand to the other, as if she couldn't decide what she wanted to do with them. _This is silly,_ she told herself firmly. _He'll know the answers I seek. He's the expert at this kind of thing. He will know how I should progress._

"Yeah? And?"

"Inanimate things don't have souls. I should know."

"Why's that? 'Cause you're a Reader?"

River shook her head. Now that she actually combed her hair now and then, it didn't look quite so knotted or nasty with grease. "Inanimate things don't have souls. And they took me apart, rendered me inanimate. They stripped my soul away while screaming for mercy they would not give. So I know of what I speak about."

Jayne blinked. "All people got souls. All living things, yeah? Well, mebbe not plants or animals or nothing. But smart ones do."

"I haven't. It's what makes me accurate. It's why I bond with Serenity." River decided to sit nearby, though she didn't use the table Jayne was sitting in front of. "Inanimate things bond on a molecular level. We understand each other."

"I still say you've got a soul. Why else do what you do?"

"All machines have purpose. All tools have an action, reaction, need to fulfill. Like your girls. Weapons are tools, means to an end. I am the same, ultimately. Another weapon, another tool. They know this," she said, looking back out of the rec area. "They intuit it, if they don't wish to verbalize such a thing. They feel guilty for thinking it, but they do know this. But they feel safer to pretend I've a soul."

"I call 'em girls 'cause they're temperamental and beautiful. I treat 'em right 'cause if they don't work right, we're all dead."

"Yes. We all must fulfill a purpose." River looked down at the deck of cards in her hand and then put them down on a side table. "Even me, I suppose."

"You figure it out yet?"

"No."

Jayne continued to polish his girls in silence. River watched him, taking it all in. She did that a lot nowadays. She sat and watched, thinking whatever she thought. Jayne was still surprised that she said as much to him, and was surprised he was able to answer. But if she didn't come at him with a kitchen knife, he supposed she was all right.

"Don't tell my brother," she said suddenly, looking up to meet Jayne's eyes. Her voice was pleading, and her lips trembled slightly. "He doesn't know. He still thinks I have a soul."

"What if you do?" Jayne asked soberly. "What if he's right?"

"He's not. He can't discuss matters of the metaphysical or spiritual. He thinks he can ply me with pills and it'll all be better. It isn't, no matter what he thinks. I'm better, but in the sense that I can tell where my boundaries are now. I know where I end and others begin, which are the dreams and false memories that bombard me. I see the grit for what it is. But I know that all isn't right, and I'll never be what I would have been."

Jayne put his gun down slowly, carefully. "You sorry about that much?"

"Souls can be sorry. I haven't any soul, and I'm not sorry. I did what had to be done."

Jayne blinked at her matter of fact tone. "What had to be done?"

"It was my turn," she said softly. "It was time to be used appropriately. It wasn't time to hide anymore. I had a role to play." River looked at the guns spread out on the table, a soft sigh escaping her lips. "We all have a role to play."

"It don't make us tools, you know."

River looked up at Jayne and shrugged helplessly. "Just don't tell Simon, okay? It'll break his heart."

"So why tell me?"

"You understand all kinds of weapons. You understand the soulless things. I thought you'd understand what was happening to me."

Jayne looked at her, really _looked_ at her. "I still think you got a soul. I think it's shock."

"My vital signs are stable."

"Not physical bleeding-out-your-ears shock. I mean... You ain't used to it, is all. So it's easier not to think. Happens all the time. But that don't make you a thing. It just makes you a girl that's a little confused, still. Nothing wrong with that."

She blinked at him owlishly. "You're being very nice to me."

"You ain't coming at me with a knife," Jayne replied, rolling his eyes. "Ain't no big thing."

"It wasn't you," she said softly. "Blue Sun made them, the hands of blue, two by two. Blue Sun took away my sky. They put me in a box and set limits on me. They took away my soul."

Jayne pursed his lips, thinking. "I think they hid it."

She looked at him, confused. Her brows knit together as she thought about it, and Jayne was startled to realize that she was actually very pretty.

"Is that part of a plan?" she asked tremulously. She bit her lip with uncertainty, and searched Jayne's face for sincerity. "Can that be done?"

"Don't see why not. You can't take somebody's soul away unless you kill 'em. And even then, you can't catch it. It goes on up to God or Buddha or whoever makes 'em. So I think yours just hid out down deep somewhere, so that as much as they dug around in your head, it couldn't be touched. 'Cause no weapon can use itself. Even my best girls don't pull their own triggers."

River blinked, then suddenly smiled at Jayne. "You're right." She was relieved, and leaned forward in her chair. "I was very, very afraid that I was a soulless thing."

"Nah," Jayne replied, shaking his head. "Can't be done, I don't think. So no worries there." He gave her a sincere smile. "And I won't tell your brother you been silly."

River picked up the deck of cards. "Rummy?"

"Sure. Lemme finish on my last one and put 'em away nice."

She grinned at him, taking out the cards. "Thank you."

Jayne watched her shuffle the cards as he finished polishing his last gun. Her movements were graceful, her wrists strong. "You're all right sometimes, you know."

She ducked her head shyly, a half smile on her face. "Sometimes I almost feel it, too."

After his guns were put away safely, Jayne played rummy with her. She beat him twice, but that was all right. He was better at poker, anyway.


End file.
